Have you ever moved into a place and found objects left by the previous occupants? 

Here are several I found in the Kerouac House:


The snow globe would have been nice, except the water was discolored and I couldn't successfully replace it.  Instead of a magical urban wonderland, it conveyed an impression of pollution. 

The hair sticks are pretty and I would have used them, but my hair has been far too short during my time here.  I'll leave them for the next resident where I found them, in the pencil holder over the desk. 

In case you think it's okay to use a stranger's toenail clippers, I will now do you the favor of informing you it is not.  Better yet, I'll put my gloves back on and dispose of them as a safety measure.

Beneficial objects in the house far outnumber the likes of the toenail clippers, of course.  This is all at the front of my mind as I'm packing today.  I promise I will try to leave behind only good things, like chocolate biscotti and blank CDs.  If the next resident finds a hair in the drain or an inauspicious fortune cookie at the bottom of the kitchen drawer, I'll hope it wasn't mine. 

PS - The reading was so fun--my thanks to the kind and lively crowd that came. 

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My farewell reading will be held at the Kerouac House this Saturday night.  I'll probably read shorts/prose poems.  Several will address the arguably underexplored intersection between family and personal defense weapons.  (Other topics will also be addressed.)

What: my farewell reading
Date: Saturday, February 16th
Time: 8:00pm
Where: The Kerouac House

Directions and further details (including an embarrassingly dated author photograph) can be found through the project's web site: http://www.kerouacproject.org/

...and then we can move on, I promise.

Looking through my photos, I remembered this guy:


And the gift shop, where we saw these:


A little boy grabbed one and asked his father if it was a real gator.  "It was," he said. 

We saw an alligator wrestler do this:


Do you think Gatorland has nothing to do with writing? 

Imagine an alligator wrestler winking at you before throwing his hands back to hold the animal's jaw open with his little human chin. 

Inspiring (and more than a little hot), no?

I didn't feel badly for the alligators because their eyes were so empty/flat and we were told their brains were lima-bean sized. 

Judy, the sad-eyed Florida black bear housed in a small cage, was a different story, one I don't care to dwell on. 

I should be posting about writing, but my process is really so boring.  It's all cups of coffee, typing, watching squirrels through the window, typing, a phone call, another cup of coffee, maybe some more typing.

Instead, I would like to share some visual art.  

One of my dearest friends, the fiction writer Stephanie Carpenter, was visiting last weekend.  Steph had brought with her a foam poster kit to help us express/document our visit to the Magic Kingdom.  When we went to Gatorland, her vision became more complex and she was inspired to purchase some stickers. 

The suggested execution:


The Gator Kingdom mash-up:


The best ideas here were Steph's.  She made the carrot and turnips, and put the gator in the castle.  It seems unfair when an extremely gifted writer is also a talented visual artist, doesn't it?

Erin Brooks Worley

Arrived at the beginning of December. She has survived the holidays (as have we) and is now comfortably writing in Jack's house. We wish her the best. (Although we haven't been able to convince her to blog!) www.kerouacproject.org

I can't believe it's been three months... my time in the Kerouac House has flown by! The last few weeks I've been sleeping back in Jack's tiny bedroom, and the place had this reverb of possibility. It was just about 50 years this week that he came back to the house from a few hectic months in NY and banged out Dharma Bums. We'll be crossing paths, in a sense...I'll be heading back to Brooklyn tomorrow. For friends in NYC, I'll be having a book party for my new collection of short stories at Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery in Williamsburg Brooklyn December 7 at 7. Not quite "On the Road," but it's a nice little book!

Hi all,
My book, Scrub, is on it's way to Orlando, and to celebrate it's arrival we'll be having to readings in College Park. The first is Wednesday, at Infusion Tea as part of the Joe P.'s Soft Focus night, which starts at 6:30 pm.
The second Saturday at 8 pm at the Kerouac House. This one's my big farewell reading, with a reception to follow. $5 suggested donation.

If you're in town, I hope you can make it to one or both! If you're farther away, I'll make sure to send the amazon link just a soon as I've got it! I'm really proud of the collection, and looking forward to sharing it.

Signing off for the day, going to go look at modernist architecture in Sarasota. Three cheers for Paul Rudolph!

I'm happy to announce I'm out of the writing rut I hit for about a week at the end of October. The Kerouac House is ever-inspiring, to be sure, but its tin roof can't protect me from everything. After sending the MS of Scrub off the printer and editing my first novel, Blue-eyed Apples, there was a pregnant pause of sorts. I managed to fill the time alright (primarily painting, but Halloween was also involved, I fashioned myself as sexy Elvis), but I'm thrilled to be digging back into the short stories (a collection about people and water and the magnetism therein) and the *new* novel. It's in its earliest stages, but after gathering up the dozens of scraps of paper around the house, I've started to organize characters and plot developments on the ever-thrilling spreadsheet... progress feels good. I'll keep you posted.

One of the more exciting things that's been going on in Florida is writing and production for Scrub, my first collection of short stories. I came with plans to work on my first novel, Blue-eyed Apples, and start my second, about the art scene in Williamsburg, when I found myself writing one short story... then another and another. Before long, I has a (small) body of work that fit very well together. Four of the five stories were penned in my first month down here, September 2007, and they all share themes of repentance and atonement. The fifth, about September 2001, and dealing with many of the same themes, was the writing sample that got me down here in the first place.
Shady Lane Press has been wonderful to walk me through the process... as a graphic designer, I've got more than my fair share of opinions on design, and what we've managed to put together is a lovely little book (70pgs) of five stories with illustrations about people around the country looking for forgiveness. It'll be on the shelves (of Orlando, at least) in mid-November, and available on Amazon and through Shady Lane Press in the weeks after that. Hope you check it out!

Here's the cover, which features an original watercolor by yours truly.

Greetings from Orlando!
First, an apology for the delay... there's been some technical difficulties with the login, but the Kerouac House is back online and ready to go! I've been blogging on another site in the interim, go to www.nemenator.wordpress.org to see what I've been up to.
And now, an introduction: I, Emily Nemens, am the 22nd writer in residence of the Kerouac Project of Orlando. I arrived Sept 5, 2007... the same day that On the Road hit shelves fifty years ago. It felt pretty special to do the counter commute with Jack—I caught a flight out of New York early, and arrived in college park orlando with no less than a two bags, a saxophone, a box of books, a box of paints, and a head full of ideas.